LED Test & configuration tool...

[Artesia]

Ever had leds in projects which were too bright, dim or poorly matched relative to eachother ?

Built a little tool for matching the intensity of different LEDS side by side... when the resistance is set to a satisfactory level.. it is mesured & a suitable fixed value resistor is used for the intended application circuit the led will be used in...

This tool, as is.. also allows in circuit mesurement of led current & colour selection on bi-colour leds...

(without lots of time wasting thumbling with resistors, batterys & leds by hand..)

It occured to me that it might be more useful to have this as a permanent desktop 'widget' in a box of its own.. so... some plans for a proper version will be provided soon.

For those of you who might want to build this as is... Here is a discription of the above circuit....

* The 5v power for the circuit is provided by a simple 7805 regulator setup (as seen in MIOS projects).

(The connection chain for each led tester circuit is as below:)

* +5v power> 120ohm Fixed resistor > 10K Variable (linear) Resistor > Circuit breaking jumper > 'LED' socket +V ('LED' socket -V to ground)

* In parallel with the 'circuit breaking jumper, some wire hoops are fed through the strip board as test points for the multimeter mesuring in milliamps. the two pairs of vertically orientated jumpers are for selecting which led's circuit current is being mesured.

* led test socket is just a section of IC socket broken off... 4 pins worth

(dang.. this post probably belongs in 'tips & tricks' ?)